


Infliction

by 1001cranes



Category: Lost
Genre: Gen, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-08
Updated: 2011-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:40:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1001cranes/pseuds/1001cranes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>People go to Phuket to lose themselves. Jack's fucked up enough to find himself instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Infliction

**Author's Note:**

> For the [info]cues quote challenge. "This is my body, and it's been transfigured... I'm lithe and I'm powerful and I'm wild. This tattoo has turned me into a jungle thing, into a head-hunting Dayak motherfucker... Four hours under a tattooist's needle and for the first time in my life I can look in the mirror and actually like what I see." -- Seven Tattoos, Peter Tractenberg.

When Jack first gets his tattoo, he wants to touch it constantly. It seems obscene, somehow, like masturbating in public. He can't help that what he feels for it projects. You only have to look at him once to see the reverence, the need, the erotic thrill that threatens to consume him. It's the kind of feeling that shines out from the faces of saints and martyrs, and all other pure narcissists. He looks like St. Sebastian, or Christ on the Cross, or Mary from the Pietà.

And he understands that it confuses people, that when they see his tattoo they're not sure exactly what to think. He's a doctor with ink, a surgeon who let himself be poked and prodded with needles. A white hat with a dark stain. His tattoo is absolution in desecration. It blots him out, taints him, a stain only in the periphery. He needs that. Jack never wanted to be perfect. He never wanted to be a doctor, or a hero, or a leader. He needs to mar perfection, and pretend its perfect anyway.

He needs it more than ever here. The jungle is dangerous, but worse, it's portent. It knows Jack. It recognizes him. And Jack understands it in a way he's only understood once before -- in Phuket, in a small dingy room where a man with numbers tattooed down his back inked Jack's arm. You know, sometimes Jack wants nothing more than to disappear inside the jungle. Assimilate. Become. He wants it, and he's afraid of it. He has to be. Because whenever he feels like dropping all responsibility and running towards it with open arms, he thumbs his tattoo and reminds himself that it'll keep, that there's enough darkness in him all ready.


End file.
